The Bay at Midnight

bucket, the binoculars still around my neck. There were six people all together. Near me were my hoped-for future friend, an older boy, a woman—probably their mother—and a distance away, three men. Every one of them turned to stare at me. All those black faces. I felt like I’d gotten out of my boat in Africa. I had never felt so white and out of place in all my life.

I had to force my legs to take the few steps to where the girl was standing.

“Hi!” I said to her, my voice far too loud and cheery. “What’s biting?”

The girl stared at me blankly as though she didn’t understand English. Her skin was very dark and she had large eyes in the same deep shade of brown. Her hair had a bunch of plastic barrettes in it, all of them shaped like little bows in different colors. She was shorter than me and maybe a little younger than I’d guessed. I thought she was cute, but she sure didn’t seem to have much to say and my greeting just hung there in the hot July air.

The older boy standing next to the girl narrowed his eyes at me.

“What you doin’ over here?” he asked.

“I just wanted to fish on this side of canal for a change,” I said with a nervous smile.

“We got enough trouble catchin’ fish for ourselves without you taking up space,” the boy said.

“Hush, George,” the woman said, moving closer and resting her hand on the boy’s muscular forearm. “I’m Salena,” she said. “What’s your name, sugar?”

“Nancy,” I lied. I looked at the girl who was close to my age. “What’s your name?”

“Wanda,” the girl said. Her voice was high and it rose up a little on the second syllable of her name.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Eleven,” she said. I could barely remember being eleven, but I guessed it was close enough.

“I’m twelve,” I said. “Could I fish here next to you for a while?”

“’Spose,” she said.

“What you using for bait, Nancy?” Salena asked.

“Squid,” I said, reaching into my bucket. I cut off a bit of bait with my knife and ran my hook through it, my hands shaking the whole time. “What do you use?” I directed my question to Wanda.

“Bloodworms,” she said.

“I use them sometimes, too.” I baited my hook and cast carefully, not wanting to catch the hook in any of their heads and have them madder at me than they already seemed to be. Their hair was really different from mine. Salena and Wanda had stiff-looking hair even blacker than Isabel’s. Wanda’s stuck out from her barrettes in little pigtails all over her head. I couldn’t see the men very well because they were quite a distance from me, but George’s hair was extremely wiry and tight to his head. He was wearing a white T-shirt and baggy tan pants and he looked like he played a lot of sports, every bit of him thick and shiny with perspiration.

“Can you read?” I asked Wanda.

“’Course she can read.” George scowled. “You think we pick cotton all day or something?”

“Shut up,” Wanda said to George. Then to me, she said, “Sure I can read.”

“Have you read any Nancy Drew books?” I asked.

“Some,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Do you have a favorite?” I was testing her, unable to picture a colored girl reading Nancy Drew. I wondered what it was like to be colored and read a book entirely filled with white people. For that matter, what was it like for Wanda to read just about any book or watch any TV show? The only one I could think of with a colored person in it was Jack Benny’s show with Rochester, the butler, or whatever he was.

“Ain’t got no favorite,” Wanda said, reeling in her line, which was tangled up in a mass of seaweed. “I like them all.”

I was quite convinced she was lying now. How could she not have a favorite? “Well, my favorite is The Clue of the Dancing Puppet,” I said. “It’s new.”

“I ain’t read that one.” Wanda set the bottom of her pole in the sand and worked the seaweed loose. “I liked the one where she joined the circus.”

My mouth dropped open. “The Ringmaster’s Secret?” I asked.

“Yeah, with that—” she pointed to her wrist “—that horse charm.”

“Right,” I said. She actually had read it and I felt terrible for thinking otherwise. “My name’s not really Nancy,” I said to her, wanting to reward her honesty with my own. “It’s Julie.”

“Why’d you tell me it was Nancy?”

“’Cause I like solving mysteries, just like she did.”

“Ain’t no mysteries here,” George said. “So you can go back over your side of this here canal.”

“Shut up,” Wanda said to her brother again. She rolled her eyes at me. “You got any brothers?”

I shook my head, smiling.

“You lucky,” she said. Her worm was still on her hook, and with a forward motion, she cast the line into the canal again.

“You got a sister, though,” George said.

“I have two,” I said. “Lucy and Isabel.”